A “plutonium pit” is the actual core of a thermonuclear bomb. According the Scientific American, the U.S. plans to spend $1.5 trillion dollars on new plutonium pits and new intercontinental ballistic missiles to put them on (actually, it’s not even clear from the article if the $1.5 trillion includes the missiles. This is all while people are sleeping the streets, life expectancies are falling, violence is raging, educational attainment is falling, and the list goes on. I don’t even hear politicians talking about peace or even proposing negotiations to limit the pace of this new arms race. Real, courageous leaders would do this, and they seem to be in short supply. With all the risks our global civilization is facing (food security, floods, fires, drought, pandemics and biological weapons to name just a few very bad ones not really being addressed), we can’t let nuclear proliferation and nuclear war rear its ugly head again. To our politicians I say, somebody step up and lead, you cowards!
Tag Archives: U.S. politics
October 2023 in Review
Most frightening and/or depressing story: Israel-Palestine. From the long-term grind of the failure to make peace and respect human rights, to the acute horror causing so much human suffering and death at this moment, to the specter of an Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran. It’s frightening and depressing – but of course it is not my feelings that matter here, but all the people who are suffering and going to suffer horribly because of this. The most positive thing I can think of to say is that when the dust settles, possibly years from now, maybe cooler heads will prevail on all sides. Honorable mention for most frightening story is the 2024 U.S. Presidential election starting to get more real – I am sure I and everyone else will have more to say about this in the coming (exactly one as I write this on November 5, 2023) year!
Most hopeful story: Flesh eating bacteria is becoming slightly more common, but seriously you are not that likely to get it. And this really was the most positive statement I could come up with this month!
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The generally accepted story of the “green revolution“, that humanity saved itself from widespread famine in the face of population growth by learning to dump massive quantities of fossil fuel-derived fertilizer on farm fields, may not be fully true.
Red Caesarism
“Red Caesarism” is the idea that some right-wing white Christian nationalist type will swoop in and save the United States by establishing himself as a dictator. Sounds crazy, but some people out there are quite serious about it. Among them Kevin Slack, a professor at Hillsdale College, Steve Bannon, and quite possibly Donald J. Trump.
Sure, who wouldn’t want a benevolent dictator, as long as they agree with you. Of course, one group’s benevolent dictator will be another’s tyrant. Just give Handmaid’s Tale a quick reread and see if you want that to come true. Which is why we have a system of government that, despite its many faults, has remained relatively stable and allowed for a peaceful transition of power longer than any other one on Earth at the moment (I think this is true…somebody feel free to provide a counterexample.)
I can still envision a scenario where Red Caesar tries to do his thing, ends up with his head on a pike, and we get a military governor instead. At least for awhile. And then the whole cycle could repeat. Let’s hope not. Let’s try to restore some faith in our election system instead.
Citizens United
In case you doubt the corruption and illegitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court, the biggest issue in recent years is not the petty corruption of justices accepting gifts or even the Dobbs decision. Wealthy and powerful interests have always used propaganda to grab more wealth and power literally at the expense of all life on earth. But Citizens United legalized bribery to the point that the wealthy and powerful can just buy politicians who will write the country’s laws in their favor. They don’t need to even convince us ordinary citizens to look the other way any more. And Citizens United is a slippery slope – now some states and municipalities are considering legislations that would give corporations the right to vote in elections. This is just not democracy. The consent of the majority of voters has to remain as a check on corporate power, imperfect as that is. Fair and equal treatment in the courts is the other check, and that was somewhat obviously the logic when corporations and other types of legal entities were given limited rights as persons. At this point, I think we need a constitutional amendment clarifying that the rights of corporate persons stop short of political speech. The political speech of non-profit organizations is limited, so I don’t see why that can’t be extended to for-profit organizations. Why would trying to make a profit separate a legal person from a non-person? If we’re really going to go down the slippery slope and give corporations the vote, why not also give it to non-profit organizations, unions, or for that matter animals or nature itself? How about some sort of custodian that can vote on behalf of future organizations? Arguments along these lines have all been made. Now maybe we can turn all voting over to AIs who can figure out what is best for us.
I think we better just stick to majority rule (of for and by HUMAN beings), HUMAN rights, and equal protection in the courts for “persons” including various types of legal entities.
gun sales as an indicator of social unrest
This article is from ProPublica, so you can take this person’s opinion on root causes however you want. But numbers are numbers, and checkable. Here are some numbers:
- “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns became the leading killer of children in 2020, overtaking car crashes, drug overdoses and disease for the first time in the nation’s history.”
- “And then Barack Obama won in 2008. So you have this sort of uncapping of hate and conspiracy, much of it racially driven, that the NRA was tapping into. Prior to 2007, people in the United States never purchased more than 7 million guns in a single year. By the time Barack Obama left office, the United States was purchasing almost 17 million guns a year. And so I think it’s impossible to discount the degree to which Obama’s presidency lit this whole thing on fire.”
- “But with Trump, we experienced a whole new, never seen before level of fear, racism, hatred and conspiracy that culminated in 2020. In that year, you had George Floyd, COVID lockdowns, Black Lives Matter, Antifa protests and Kyle Rittenhouse. I mean, it’s the most tumultuous year any of us can remember with the most hatred and conspiracy and nastiness. None of us can remember a year like that. In that year, the United States consumers bought almost 23 million guns in a single year, more than three times as much as before Barack Obama took office.”
a third party candidate in 2024?
Fox News mentions three possible third party candidates in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election:
Asked if three moderates — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland — would be considered for the potential ticket, Lieberman said they “are very active members of No Labels” and “would be naturals to consider” as he pointed toward their “strong records of bipartisanship and getting things done for the country and for their constituents.”
Fox News
Third party candidates matter. I tend to think Ross Perot almost certainly hurt George Bush in 1992, an outcome I liked, and made a decisive difference against Al Gore (and Lieberman!) in 2000, an outcome I hated. It would be much better to have a runoff or instant runoff system which would allow us to elect a President who actually gets a majority of the votes, but that is not the system we have for the foreseeable future.
Just a quick reminder that Bernie Sanders took the moral high ground in 2000 and chose not to run as an independent, or “pull a Nader” as one could say. That would have almost certainly have hurt Biden.
What would a “moderate” (by U.S. standards, “well-right-of-center” by international standards) candidate mean in 2024? It’s hard to say. Biden is firmly center-right, and I somewhat doubt a self-described moderate candidate would be much to his right, if at all. But that is the reality. The perception is that the Republican party has successfully tarred him as a “liberal” as they have successfully done to every center-right candidate since Clinton at least. So a “moderate” candidate might take voters away from Biden who self-identify as centrists. The “moderate” candidate would almost certainly take votes away from Trump, especially if they managed to attract the religious conservative vote. So after thinking it through, I think Trump could actually come in third in a contest involving a third-party candidate, and there could be a pretty close contest between Biden and the third party. Which would leave the Republican Party wondering how it got left on the outside of the “establishment” looking in. The Democrats could be even more dismissive of the actual center-left which favors better benefits for working people in line with other industrialized countries. Long live the Pro-Business, Pro-War (which is a business after all) Consensus!
another depressing U.S. statistic
According to KFF (which I hadn’t previously heard of, but describes itself as “the independent source for health policy research, polling, and news”), firearms are the leading cause of death among children in the United States.
Guns – including accidental deaths, suicides, and homicides – killed 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the United States in 2020, or roughly 5.6 per 100,000 children.
In each of the peer countries, guns kill fewer children than motor vehicles, cancer, congenital diseases, and other injuries, and often behind other conditions such as heart disease.
The U.S. is the only country among its peers that has seen a substantial increase in the rate of child firearm deaths in the last two decades (42%). All comparably large and wealthy countries have seen child firearm deaths fall since 2000. These peer nations had an average child firearm death rate of 0.5 per 100,000 children in the year 2000, falling 56% to 0.3 per 100,000 children in 2019.
KFF
This is certainly disturbing and upsetting. I suppose there is some context to consider. For example, children don’t die in large numbers of preventable diseases, which is a great thing, so when they do die it is mostly from rare diseases and accidehttps://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/guntrol.pngnts. I would want to know how the U.S. compares in overall child mortality to the other industrialized countries considered in this study. Probably not favorably, but not mentioned in this study. I would be interested to know what the breakdown between children and older teens is, and what the breakdown between accidents, homicides, and suicides is. These are all tragedies, but each cause of death within each age group would have different root causes and different solutions.
Regardless, it is negligent and ignorant that we are letting this happen, and yet more proof our country is truly “exceptional”, just not in the good way.
How Religious is Congress Compared to the Country?
Axios has some interesting stats:
- About 27% of U.S. adults report not be affiliated with any religion. Only 4% of our elected officials will admit to the same? This implies to me that organized religion is…well…organized when it comes to pushing its priorities in the public realm.
- 90% of Congress members identify as Christian, compared to 65% of the population. About 6% of Congress is Jewish compared to 2% of the population, so they are overrepresented. If you round to the nearest percent, “Buddhists or Hindus” and Muslims each make up around 1% of the population, and around 1% of Congress. If you talk to Buddhists AND Hindus, they might have some thoughts on how they have been lumped together in this survey.
So, I suppose the U.S. is still a majority Christian nation, and certainly a majority religious nation, but the viewpoints of nearly a third of us are severely underrepresented by our elected leaders.
This survey did not address how many of our elected leaders who claim to be religious humans are actually lizards who drink the blood of human babies in the basements of pizza parlors.
depressing stats about the U.S.: assault deaths
We are more violent by an order of magnitude than other developed countries, and while the pre-pandemic trend was downward it has turned up sharply again.
what’s a good U.S. strategy?
Here are some ideas:
- Rearm Germany and Japan. Why not throw in some nuclear proliferation while we are at it. Maybe South Korea or Taiwan would like to host some nuclear weapons, if they are not already?
- Get involved in a land invasion of Russia, preferably in winter. (A convenient way to do this is to start your campaign in the fall or even late summer, and just assume it will be short.)
- Also plan some Pacific island-hopping warfare.
- Just assume this will not end with the deployment of weapons of mass destruction by any of the parties involved, especially not the world’s guiding light for peace and democracy.